Structure

Special ReportTranscripts for Section 3 of Episode 41

Time

Summary

07:30

While operation ‘Great Storm’ was in process on the Free State and Eastern Cape platteland, a white policeman shot and killed a black man arrested for killing an aged couple on a farm outside Kroonstad. The policeman asked for amnesty in Bloemfontein this week because he says he killed in retaliation for the farm attacks. A word of warning, some of the police photographs might offend sensitive viewers.

Jacobus Johannes de Ru worked as a detective for the Sasolburg murder and robbery squad in 1990. On 15 June he was called up by his commanding officer to interrogate a suspect arrested for the gruesome murder of the Bezuidenhout’s, a couple who had lived on a farm in the Kroonstad district. They had been killed with an axe. Investigating the murders of farmers and elderly people was nothing new to him, he told the Amnesty Committee this week and these cases were top priority.

Col Voigt would ask me to investigate these matters each time and warn me that these suspects had to be found at all costs. He also said that the youth and blacks under leadership of Peter Mokaba were exercising the slogan, ‘kill the farmer and kill the Boer’ and were later using the slogan, ‘one settler, one bullet.’

De Ru was told to take the suspect Jonas Ramphalile to the scene of the crime so that he can point out certain areas to the police. He was told that the suspect should deliberately be given the opportunity to escape and then killed while escaping. // When we go the rondavel, the suspect walked around the rondavel and at the entrance of this bush he stood, then he quickly walked into the bush and it looked to me as if it was the ideal opportunity to let it seem as if he’s trying to escape. I took out my pistol and I fired two shots at him. He fell down and Mojafe and myself shouted that he was escaping. He died.

De Ru admitted that he supported the AWB, was a personal friend of Eugene Terreblanche and that he had sympathy for the farmers, many of whom were involved in right wing politics. But he said he committed this murder with political intent. // I tried to protect the government of the day and the apartheid policy.

The Committee seemed unconvinced of his political motive. // So, you were the judge, the jury and the executioner. // That is correct. // What was your view as an experienced policeman about instructions by somebody who tells you that you must be the judge and the executioner of people? // I believe that these criminals were members of the ANC, PAC and APLA. They had to pay for the murders.